


Captain Captured!

by ShannonPhillips



Series: A Little Less Attitude and a Little More Altitude [15]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 01:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4460258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re coming back to the Ghost, tired but triumphant, laughing and teasing each other. Kanan’s reaching for his comlink, about to tell Hera to prep for the rendezvous with Zeb. They reach the crest of the hill and he never finishes the thought.</p><p>The Ghost’s gangway is already down. Chopper lies at the bottom. In two pieces. The little astromech’s orange ‘head’ has been ripped from the rest of his chassis, torn wires spilling from both parts. His frame is blackened with blaster bolts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain Captured!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pepoluan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepoluan/gifts).



> Karabast, this started out as a *joke*. There was a silly puzzle in the Star Wars Rebels magazine, and I wanted to build a fic around it:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Yeah, so then this happened.

They’re coming back to the Ghost, tired but triumphant, laughing and teasing each other. Kanan’s reaching for his comlink, about to tell Hera to prep for the rendezvous with Zeb. They reach the crest of the hill and he never finishes the thought.

The Ghost’s gangway is already down. Chopper lies at the bottom. In two pieces. The little astromech’s orange ‘head’ has been ripped from the rest of his chassis, torn wires spilling from both parts. His frame is blackened with blaster bolts.

Ezra and Sabine fall abruptly silent. “Hera,” Kanan says, or at least his lips shape the word—he’s not sure he’s capable of speech, he doesn’t seem to actually be breathing. He’s already reaching out for her through the Force, for that bright, welcoming presence that he leans on so often.

She’s not here. She’s not here or else she’s—

Kanan forces a breath, centers himself, and drops into a state of pure awareness. Time slows. His own fear and desperation recede; the emotions are still there, but they belong to his limited and ego-oriented self, and his consciousness now is aligned to the vaster, deeper rhythms of the Force.

Things become clearer. He sees what must be done. Enemies have come to the Ghost: the first priority is to determine if any remain, and to look for any sign of Hera.

He unholsters his blaster and strides forward. When he reaches the gangway he jerks his chin at the disassembled Chopper. “Spectre-5. See what you can do. Specter-6, we’ll sweep the ship.”

They murmur their assent. Kanan senses his padawan struggling to master his own anxiety: this is evoking memories for Ezra, memories of the day he came home and found his home destroyed. He’s doing well, considering. He falls into place just behind Kanan and to his right, his lightsaber drawn but not activated.

They move swiftly and silently through the levels of the ship. Kanan takes ladders in one or two jumps, and Ezra manages to more or less keep up. They spare no more than a glance for each of the empty cabins. There’s nothing here, no signs of struggle, nothing out of place.

No bodies.

“Nothing,” Kanan says over the comlink, for Sabine’s benefit. “We’re headed back to you.”

“There’s an open hatch out here, some tools,” Sabine replies. “Looks like they were working on some external maintenance.” She makes a grunt of effort. “Good news? The damage to Spectre-3 isn’t as bad as it looks. I think I can get him powered back up.”

“On our way,” Kanan says.

And indeed, when they file down the gangplank some lights are flickering in Chopper’s upper section. He’s still in essentially two separate pieces but Sabine has reconnected some of the wiring between them. He’s beeping and whirring, but the sounds are…wrong, nonsensical.

“What’s he saying?” Kanan demands. “I can’t understand it.”

Sabine frowns, reaches in with a wrench and makes an adjustment. “There’s some damage to his logic circuits,” she admits. “I think he’s trying to tell us what happened.”

Chopper grinds out another series of beeps. This time Kanan can catch a few key phrases. _Captain + C1-10P = ambushed by [garbled] hunters._

“Bounty hunters,” Sabine says. She gives Kanan an anguished look. “We knew this might happen, now that the Empire’s put a price on our heads.”

“Where,” says Kanan succinctly.

Sabine doesn’t need to translate, but she does anyway: “Chopper, where did they take her?”

The droid spits out more data, but again, it’s nonsense: _Negative: underwater. Negative: underground. Negative: in space. Negative: interior of volcano. Negative…_

Sabine hits the orange metal, hard, with the flat of her hand, and the flood of useless data stops. “Sorry,” she says. “Logic circuits are still misfiring. Chopper, if you can’t tell us where she is, can you tell us something _else_ that would be in the place where she is?”

Chopper whistles, and Sabine translates: "A Lasat."

“Garel City!” Ezra cries. “They took her to Garel City, Zeb was going there to get supplies!”

Kanan’s already comming him. Zeb answers in a familiar rumble: “Spectre-4.”

“This is Spectre-1. We’re back at the Ghost but Spectre-2 and Spectre-3 were attacked in our absence. Spectre-2 is missing, we think she’s been taken somewhere near your location.”

A pause. Then: “Gonna need more than that, Spectre-1,” Zeb answers. His voice is a little deeper now, a little huskier. “Tell me who I need to hit.”

Chopper emits a few more garbled phrases. Kanan catches the main word: “Vehicle. You’re looking for some kind of vehicle.”

“I’m _in_ the _city_ ,” Zeb says, every syllable over-exaggerated. “There’s a lot of kriffing _vehicles_ here, Spectre-1.”

Sabine tweaks something inside Chopper’s head. The stream of atonal beeping starts up again: _Negative: shaped like a triangle. Negative: walker legs. Negative: round front cockpit. Negative: TIE fighter transport…_

Sabine makes a noise of frustration and turns the wrench in the opposite direction. Chopper gives a short whistle. _Positive…_

“Yes?” Kanan says sharply.

_Positive: guns._

It’s little enough to go on, but Kanan’s about to relay the information anyway when the channel flares open again from Zeb’s end: “Oh. Oh no.”

“What?” Kanan demands.

“I think I just saw her.” Zeb’s voice is grim. Sabine looks up, eyes huge with worry, and Ezra sucks in a ragged breath.

“We’re on our way to your location,” Kanan says, and cuts the channel. Whatever put that tone into Zeb’s voice, he can’t do anything about it until he’s _there_. “Sabine, Ezra, get Chopper stowed away as best you can and prep for take-off.”

They’re in the air when Zeb signals him again. “Ghost, _talk some sense into her_.”

“You’ve got her?” There’s a lot of background noise coming through the channel. Shouts, blaster fire, screaming.

“I _could_ have her if she would _come_.”

“I…told…you…not…without…the others…” It’s Hera, but Kanan’s immediate surge of joy is tempered by the strained quality of her voice: her words are coming out between gritted teeth, as if the effort of speaking is almost more than she can manage.

Zeb again: “Three Imperial troop transports, Spectre-1. We’ve got control of one, we could make a run for it.” Another round of—sounds like a laser turret firing. Followed by a sharp command from Hera:

“STOP FIRING! You’ll hit the prisoners!” And then she _screams._

Kanan forgets com discipline and shouts: “Hera! _Hera!_ ”

“It’s a shock collar,” Zeb cuts in, his voice urgent and furious. “They put her in a shock collar and someone on one of the other transports is activating it. If she would run, if we could get the distance…but she’s at the helm now, and she’s just playing cat and mouse with them.”

Then Hera again: “We are…running…” she pants. “We’re running these sleemos _down_. Hold on— _nnnngggghhhh_!”

“Seven minutes from your position,” Kanan says. “Spectre-4…”

“Yeah?”

“Keep the channel open. And follow your captain’s orders.”

“ _Karabast_. Shock collars can kill, you know.”

Kanan grinds his teeth and says nothing. For seven minutes, all he can do is fly. And listen. To the chase as it unfolds, to Zeb’s cursing, to each cry of agony that’s wrung from Hera’s throat. Her voice is weakening; he tells himself it’s only that her throat is raw and hoarse.

Then one of her screams is echoed by a soft sob from within the cockpit, and Kanan realizes that Ezra is standing behind him.

“Kid,” he says, without turning around. “I’m the only one who can fly the ship right now. That leaves you and Sabine to go down and get control of the situation. Can I count on you?”

A sniff. “Yes,” Ezra says.

“Good,” he says, punching buttons. “Get into those transports. Find whoever has the remote for the collar. That will be the single most dangerous moment, because it’s possible there’s a detonation function; the only reason I can think of that they wouldn’t have used it yet is if they’re worried about blowing up whatever Imperials Hera and Zeb have in that transport. But if their backs are up against a wall they might make a different choice. _Don’t_ let that happen.” And then he does turn, because he needs the reassurance of what he’ll see in Ezra’s face.

The kid nods, a little jerky, eyes still over-bright: but there’s resolve in every line of his body. “You can do this,” Kanan says with utter conviction, and Ezra nods grimly and heads back down the ladder.

Forty more seconds and… “I have visual on you, Spectre-2,” Kanan says. He can tell Hera’s transport because it’s the one without any prisoners locked to the outside; also it’s the one that the other two are firing on. Hera’s led the chase to the city outskirts, a now-mostly-abandoned manufacturing area. She’s weaving skillfully through the shuttered hulks of buildings, almost dancing between blasts from the laser turrets, although he sees a stutter in her evasive pattern that coincides with another strangled cry of pain over the comlink.

“Kara—“ That’s Zeb.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” That’s Hera, thready and faint.

“She blacked out,” Zeb growls.

“I’m back,” she gasps.

“I’m here,” Kanan says, putting as much warmth and support into the two words as he can. He flies low, centering the pursuing troop transports in his targeting reticle. The Ghost has the firepower to obliterate them. He could put an end to what’s killing Hera right now—but he can see the wretched figures locked in the transports’ exterior holding cells: they are what Hera has been suffering for, and he knows, he _knows_ that she’s right to do it.

His thumb only hovers over the trigger for an instant.

“Spectre-5, Spectre-6,” he says instead. “Ready to jump?”

“Ready,” Sabine says, cool and confident.

“Ready,” Ezra echoes a second later. Kanan feels a surge of pride and gratitude for them both, these shining, gifted, fearless young people ready to place themselves in harm’s way over and over for others’ sake. He trusts them both with his life. He trusts them with _Hera’s_ life.

The wind keens as the Ghost slices just above the ragged tops of the abandoned factories. Kanan pulls ahead of the transports and starts a strafing run, laying down fire between Hera and her pursuers.

The two transports veer in different directions. One pulls up short to avoid the Ghost’s fire and ends up spinning out, circling to a skidding halt in the middle of the street. The other peels off into a side alley, but Hera’s on it: she throws her transport into a hard right turn, threads a nimble course directly through the burnt-out hull of an empty building, and slams on the brakes just in time to block the alley’s exit.

And then she screams. And screams. And screams.

Kanan puts the Ghost into a dive and punches open the gangway. “Now, _now_!” he shouts.

Sabine jumps first, landing on the top of the first transport. She’s holding something in her left hand; with her right, she yanks open the transport’s upper hatch and tosses what she was holding inside. There’s a blinding flash of light. When it fades, Sabine has already swung inside.

Meanwhile the Ghost continues its glide, and Ezra drops onto the second transport. He ignites his lightsaber and jumps in.

Hera’s agonized voice abruptly cuts out.

Kanan’s fists spasm on the controls, jerking up the Ghost’s nose and threatening to send the ship into a spin. He’s occupied for a minute bringing it back under control. Aims the thrusters at the ground and fires—there. The ship hangs in an unsteady, unwilling equilibrium, hovering just a few feet above the tops of the buildings. It’s burning fuel at a fabulous rate, Hera will kill him—

Hera will—

“Spectre-4,” Kanan grits out. “Status.”

“Got her, Spectre-1,” Zeb says. “She’s out. But she’s breathing.”

“Spectre-5? Spectre-6?”

“These bucketheads won’t be taking any more prisoners for a while,” Sabine says.

And Ezra: “I can’t tell if this remote has a detonation function or not. But I’ve got it.”

Kanan curls forward, shoulders shaking. But the com line is still open, so he doesn’t make a sound. When he looks up, his eyes are dry. “Set the prisoners free,” he says. “And come home.”

He can’t go to her, not even once the whole crew is aboard: he’s got to get them off-world, calculate the jump to hyperspace, make sure they’re headed for safe haven. He double- and triple-checks the calculations because he doesn’t even have Chopper backing him up.

In the middle of all that Zeb comes to the cockpit, and the force of his anger hits Kanan like a blow. Kanan swivels to face him, calculations forgotten. “Hera?” he says in alarm.

But no—he can sense Hera now. She’s woozy, exhausted, weak, but _alive_. Alive, alive, alive, and her spirit is singing with it just as his is.

“In her cabin. Sabine got the collar off. She came around for a bit.” Zeb’s practically spitting each word, and his voice is rising. “And don’t you _ever_ do that to me again!” he thunders.

Kanan can feel his brows knitting together. “Do…what?” he says carefully.

Zeb stalks forward, close enough to plant one thick finger in the center of Kanan’s chest. “ _Order_ me to _stand_ there and do _nothing—“_ the finger pushes forward, sending Kanan rocking backward in his chair—“while one of us is _being killed_. Do you, do you even know…”

Kanan doesn’t push back. He just locks eyes with Zeb. “Would you have made a different call?” he says softly. “Would you have left those people behind?”

“Yes!” Zeb spits. But Kanan can feel the conflict within him. A moment later he drops his hand and steps back. “Does it matter? You weren’t listening to me anyhow.”

And now Kanan stands, squaring off toe-to-toe with the Lasat. “Hey,” he says, harsh enough to drag Zeb’s eyes back to his own, and reaches out more quickly than Zeb can flinch back. He grabs the big guy by the scruff of his huge furry neck and drags his face down close to his own. For a moment it’s shaping up to be a painful headbutt: but Kanan eases up even as Zeb’s eyes flare wide in surprise.

“ _Thank. You._ ” Kanan says fervently, and leans his forehead gently against Zeb’s. “Thank you, Zeb.”

“Aaaaaannnnghhh,” Zeb says eloquently. He raises one hand and drops it helplessly. “Fine.”

Kanan lets go, smiling just a little. Zeb glares: but his anger has drained away. “Don’t get weird on me,” he mutters, and stomps out of the cockpit.

Calculations. (Alive.) Hyperspace. (Alive, alive.) Safe haven, alive, alive, alive.

Even when he can finally leave the helm, Kanan doesn’t go to her directly. He can feel that she’s sleeping, and he knows what she would want. So first he checks in on the rest of the crew.

Sabine’s working on Chopper, who’s now mostly in one piece but still a bit confused. As soon as Kanan enters the hold the little droid starts jabbering insistently about a loth-cat, a loth-rat, and a bag of meilooruns—apparently he’s under the impression that that they all need to be transported across a river in a small hoverskiff, and he demands to know the order in which each should be transported. “Sorry,” Sabine says with a rueful smile. “Believe it or not, we’re making progress.”

Kanan nods and touches a hand, briefly, to her colorful hair. “Don’t stay up too late working on him,” he says. “Hera will fix him when she’s back on her feet.”

“She’s going to be fine, you know,” Sabine says.

“Yeah,” Kanan says. “Good work today.” He feels awkward saying it—debriefings are what the ship’s captain does—but Sabine smiles up at him before returning to her work.

Ezra’s in his bunk, but he’s left the hatch open. He’s lounging on his back, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and he’s tossing a ball against the wall and catching it—again, and again, and again. No: he isn’t throwing it. He’s propelling it with the Force.

“That’s a good exercise,” says Kanan from the hatchway. “I’m going to remember that one.”

“Well it’s no fun if you _tell_ me to do it,” Ezra says. The banter is forced, hollow: but it matters that they’re both making the effort.

The ball thuds against the wall. Once. Twice.

“Do you think they,” Ezra says. Three. Four. Kanan waits. “Do you think they put shock collars on my parents?”

And it’s this, finally, that makes Kanan’s throat close and his eyes burn. But he answers the only way he can. He tells the truth.

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know.” Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Ezra catches the ball and in a quick, vicious motion of his arm, flings it across the room. It careens from wall to wall, bounces several times on the floor, and finally rolls beneath the bunk.

“She’s going to be all right, Ezra.” But it’s the wrong thing to say: he can feel the wave of anguish that rises in his padawan in response. Ezra rolls off the bunk, standing to face him.

“Sure!” He’s not shouting, but the passion in his voice gives it the force of a shout. “Sure she’s all right! Because _I’m_ better now! _I_ saved her! And I could have—if I was better _then_ , I could have—“

Kanan crosses the room in two swift steps, laying his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Close your eyes,” he commands, and Ezra does. “Breathe. Deep. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Again. Good. Now extend your awareness: feel, not just you, not just what’s locked up in you. Start by feeling me. What am I feeling?”

Ezra breathes deeply, eyes still closed. “You’re—tired.”

“Yes. What else?”

“You’re—worried.”

“A little, for you, but what else?”

“You’re—“ Ezra opens his eyes. “Happy?” he says incredulously. “How can you be _happy_?”

“I’ll show you,” Kanan says gravely. “Close your eyes. Breathe. Good. Now, extend that awareness outward. Not you, not me. Go farther. Who do you feel?”

A long pause. Ezra’s trying; his forehead is creased in concentration. But it’s when the crease eases that Kanan knows he’s succeeded.

“I feel them all,” Ezra says wonderingly.

“Tell me.”

“Sabine’s…like a swirl of color. She’s excited. She’s working on Chopper because she can’t sleep. She’s got ideas. She’s—I can’t quite feel the shape of them, but it makes sense to _her_. I think it’s going to be art.”

“Good. Move on.”

“Zeb feels like a rock. Something stubborn and stuck. He’s down in the mess hall cooking something. He’s upset. He’s…remembering something. Something sad.”

“That’s part of it,” Kanan says, “but not all of it. Go deeper.”

Ezra breathes in, breathes out. “I can’t,” he says finally. “All I feel is the rock.”

“Part of why he’s sad,” Kanan says, “is that he’s _not sadder_. His grief is ebbing. He’s sad about that.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Ezra huffs. Kanan just smiles.

“What about Hera?”

Ezra furrows his brow. “She’s asleep. I can’t feel her.”

“Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Again. Good. Go deeper.”

A long silence. When Ezra speaks at last, his voice is sluggish. “Hera feels like a star,” he says. “She’s the, the, the center. Everything that keeps us going, it comes from her.”

Kanan speaks quietly, gently, so as not to disturb his padawan’s trance. “That’s exactly how I feel her, too. Now do you know why I’m happy?”

This time Ezra answers readily. “Because we’re all still here,” he says.

“Yes. This day, Ezra, it’s not the same day that you’re remembering. The things you did today, you can’t project them into the past. And it wasn’t just you, it wasn’t just me, or Sabine, or Hera, or Zeb, who brought us all together at the end of the day. We do what we can, but there are always larger forces.” Kanan drops his hands from Ezra’s shoulders. “Do you understand? We can’t change yesterday and we can’t guarantee tomorrow. We have _today_.”

Ezra blinks slowly, coming back to himself. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I don’t know if I understand. But I guess I feel…better?”

Kanan stretches out a hand, palm up. The ball rolls out from beneath the bunk and bounces into his hand. He offers it to Ezra, and after a moment, the boy takes it.

“You should go back to practicing,” Kanan says. “Say, fifty tosses.”

“Oh, now you’ve ruined it,” Ezra says. And Kanan smiles, a little: because it matters that he’s making the effort.

And then, at last, he goes to Hera.

They’ve already treated her obvious wounds. She has bacta salve smeared on her neck, and patches over the side of her face and on her tchun: it looks like she was pistol-whipped. She’s curled on the bunk, breathing the deep and even sleep of a woman who has been dosed with serious painkillers.

Kanan strips off his armor, and boots, and eases himself down on the bunk behind her. He wraps a careful arm around her waist, drawing her close. He’ll be beside her when she wakes. What will she ask about first—the prisoners? The Ghost?

No. He can’t help but loose a half-breath of laughter when the answer comes: she’s going to ask if _he’s_ all right.

She stirs slightly, nestling into his warmth, and he presses a gentle kiss against the back of her head. “I am,” he whispers. “I’m all right, Hera. Everything is all right.”

And it’s true, it’s true, but only because everything is cradled here in his arms.

He was forced to learn long ago that he can’t always protect her; that’s not new. She’s been hurt before. She’ll be hurt again. There are always larger forces.

But in this moment, he can guard her. This night, he can give her the time she needs to heal. And Ezra—Sabine—Zeb. They’re healing too.

Tonight, they are all under his protection. He can put himself between them and everything that would bring them harm. He can keep them safe.

Tonight, everything is all right.


End file.
